Better to sit at the water’s birthThan a sea of waves to win,To live in the love that floweth forthThan the love that floweth in.Be thy heart a well of love, my child,Flowing, and free, and sure,For a cistern of love, though undefiledKeeps not the spirit pure[13].
Better to sit at the water’s birthThan a sea of waves to win,To live in the love that floweth forthThan the love that floweth in.Be thy heart a well of love, my child,Flowing, and free, and sure,For a cistern of love, though undefiledKeeps not the spirit pure[13].
Better to sit at the water’s birthThan a sea of waves to win,To live in the love that floweth forthThan the love that floweth in.
Be thy heart a well of love, my child,Flowing, and free, and sure,For a cistern of love, though undefiledKeeps not the spirit pure[13].
And neither does the spirit that is a cistern of beauty fulfil itself, nor remain pure.
Our aesthetic activity is, then, our first contact with Reality, paving the way to an understanding of the meaning of that Reality. In spite of Croce, we cannot agree that a full appreciation of thismeaning could be considered as achieved if the end is simply longing—dissatisfaction. In the very fact that beauty produces in us a yearning, that issues in a creative activity which does not, and cannot, satisfy the yearning, we have evidence that the solution is not found. In the identity of psychological content produced by beauty and by unrequited love we find the clue we seek. In the restfulness of a perfect friendship, of an intercourse which knows no subject that must not be touched upon, fears no jarring note, whatever matter comes upon the scene, can give all the keys in perfect trust, knowing that trust will never be regretted, and hold the other’s keys knowing there is the same confidence on that side; that can see with the other’s eyes, and never fear to be itself misunderstood; in that restfulness the problems of beauty, of life, of Reality itself find answer.
Let us repeat. The unsatisfyingness of beauty is due to the fact that you are taking and not giving. In order to givesomething, to others, though not to the object that roused in you the sense of beauty, you create by some technique. What is it you are receiving? An intuition, which you express to yourself creatively and to others through its effect on your character;—to which further, if you are an artist, you give external, technical expression. This intuition which you receive is the first stage of knowledge—of the knowledge of Reality. So far, agreeing withCroce, we agree with Bergson; and moreover we leave room for mysticism, since mysticism becomes the appreciation of relationship, and logic paves the way for suitable activity to develop our side of the relationship. The meaning of this becomes clearer when we consider Croce’s explanation of the process of perceiving beauty in the work of an artist, be it picture, symphony, or poem. He points out that in appreciating a work of art you enter into the mind of the creator, follow his intuition, and create the expression afresh for yourself. On the degree in which you can do this depends the fullness of your appreciation of the work.
But when you see beauty in a natural object the matter is less clear. Croce would say that you are in the first stage of knowing that object, and he is unquestionably right so far. But can we not, using the analogy of the picture or the poem, go on to say that you are following out the idea of the creator of the natural object—that you are in touch with the Cosmic Idea, which is the Idea of a Personal God? If so, there is indeed room for mysticism, for mysticism becomes simply the realisation that you are in fact doing this. Moreover, Beauty and Love at once fall into relation. Beauty is not simply expression, but the expression of a relation, and it is incomplete because the relation is not yet reciprocal. Love is that relation itself.
In another aspect, beauty is seen as the meeting-place for love, since it is the expression of an intuition of Reality, and Reality is rooted and grounded in love. Where there is limitation either of one or both of two persons, expression is needed to provide a meeting-place—speech or sign for the lesser artist, music, poetry, or picture for the greater. Each expression is a symbol of the reality it incarnates; in so far as it reaches out beyond its own immediate apprehension of that reality. All expression, all art, is symbolic and has a mystical aspect, else it would be either complete and all-embracing or devoid of real content. So far the symbolists are right.
But this opens up a wide problem. If Beauty be the formulated intuition of Reality, which, because of its incompleteness, represents in symbols things that are beyond its immediate purview, and if Reality be, as we have elsewhere argued[14], grounded on Personal Relationship, the self-expression of Love, does beauty cease when personal relations become perfect? For we have argued that a symbol belongs to the domain of the imperfect, not the perfect[15]. If so, has beauty any meaning for God? At this point we clearly come into contact with the problem of God’s creative activity. We have said[16]that the creation of God must be the creation of something new. We have said that Love, of its own nature,demands expansion, is centrifugal as well as centripetal, and in this centrifugality of love we sought the Divine Impulse to create new personalities. But behind lurked always the question “How could a God whose experience was perfect and embraced already all Reality, create anything that was new?” The reciprocity of perfected love would be new for the personal beings He had created; but His self-limitation which the freedom of those beings necessitated would not be new for Him, for self-abnegation is an eternal part of love, since love is substantiated as itself by creative self-surrender, transcendence by immanence. Would theresultof His self-limitation be new for Him, implicit as it is in His Being as Love? Would the experience of the reciprocal love of His children be a new thing for Him?
No doubt the problem, as belonging to the domain of the Transcendent, is not soluble for us, whose transcendence, whose intuition of the Real, is so incomplete. But because in such measure as we do know the Real we are ourselves transcendent, we can at least hope to touch the fringe of His garment; and Croce’s proof that pure intuition—which Bergson also urges to be ourpoint d’appuiwith the Real—belongs to the domain of aesthetic, gives us a fresh clue in our investigation.
Beauty is expression. This is Croce’s statement; and in it we find what we need, provided that we expand the definition into ‘the expressionof Relation.’ If there be a Personal God as we believe, whose experience is Reality, He must always be expressing that Reality. There is no consciousness without expression. But the expression of knowledge of the Real is Beauty. God’s Being must be full of an overwhelming Beauty. But part of His Nature, as Love, is centrifugal. That centrifugal part must also be expressed. The artist follows his expression by technical application; he paints for eye or ear, to satisfy himself and to communicate his intuition. In so far as he fails in his expression, the result is ugly. In so far, also, as God’s creation fails, through its own inevitable condition of the freedom of man, the result is ugly. Ugliness is the aesthetic, or theoretical aspect of sin; in its practical aspect sin is uneconomic, un-moral.
Now if one thing is more certain than another, it is that Beauty is for ever new. Each sense of beauty is a new creation, a fresh activity of the spirit, be it inspired never so often by the same object. And this means that to know the Real is for ever a new thing. God’s love is always new for Himself. His self-knowledge is creation perpetually renewed. It follows,a fortiori, that His knowledge of the beings He creates and is creating is each moment new. Because knowledge is in its first movement Beauty, there can be no stagnancy in Eternal Being, no dead level of satiety in Eternal Life.
Beauty is expression. For God it is the expression of His relation to Himself as transcendent, and of the substantiation of His transcendence through His relation to others as immanent, in the first stage of the movement of that relation towards and into transcendence. Beauty is the expression of a relation, and is ever new. But the relation itself is Love. God is Love; that love is expressed as Beauty; and Beauty is necessarily eternal, because it is the knowledge of Reality. God is Love. This is to say that God IS because He is a relation, to Himself and to others. Here is the inmost heart of Trinitarian Doctrine, as we have seen[17]. Because He is Love, He expresses that Reality in activity. But activity has two sides, the theoretical and the practical. His expression is, on the theoretic side, Beauty, and is hence for ever new for Him. He is for Himself a Relation, known intuitively and expressed as Beauty, and His intuition of this Reality is ever new. On the practical side it is Creation, full of purpose (economic aspect) and of goodness (moral aspect); new for us, His creatures, but only achieving, for us even, its full newness as we come to know the Reality which is the experience of the Love that is perfect in Him alone; only achieving its full newness as we begin ourselves to know, to express, and to create: as we become gods ourselves. And what He creates is real, beautiful, and new.
Beauty is eternal. It is the meeting-place of personal beings for ever; but it is a symbol only so long as these personal beings are imperfect, and their knowledge incomplete. Beauty and knowledge become coextensive as immediate intuition extends its boundaries till logic has no more a place, or rather till logic and intuition cover the same ground. So too with the practical; the useful extends its boundaries till it is coextensive with the good, and the two become one and the same. The activity that remains is as God’s activity. Love is itself because it is both knowing and doing; absolute Being is the circle of these two inseparables.
Before we proceed it will be as well to remind ourselves once more of the psychological fact that has caused us to modify Croce’s definition of beauty by introducing the idea of relation. This characteristic consequence of a vision of the beautiful is the sense of longing, akin to the longing of unreciprocated love, which issues in some creative act. This act may be a conscious attempt to produce something of aesthetic value—a work of art—or it may simply be an attempt to make ourmilieuharmonious. The housewife may be stimulated to re-cover the cushions, to tidy the house, or to re-arrange the room; the mother may try to make her children happier; the selfish man or the fractious child may try to make life more complete and harmonious by loving deeds, however short-lived. The mostcommonplace mind may feel a religious impulse; a sense of wonder and reverence. Men have always been perplexed by the apparently close connection between the beautiful and the good, between the beautiful and the sublime. This connection becomes clear in the light of our definition. Beauty is seen as the first step towards an understanding of Reality, and that Reality is Love, personal relationship, reciprocity. Relationship between finite persons first (yet not transient even here, because personality is essentially infinite, and persons are only limited in so far as they have failed as yet to achieve personality), but relationship that finds its origin and explanation in the personal, creative, Triune Being of God[18]. The perception of beauty is accompanied by emotion; free, as emotion is in itself, though aroused by external conditioning[19]; yet unsatisfied, thwarted, and so with a vein of sadness in its joy. Its joy is the joy of beginning to understand. All understanding is pleasure. One smiled with pleasure when one first grasped Euclid’s forty-seventh proposition, even. But here we understand the beauty as a symbol and a meeting-place. It makes us feel less lonely and less isolated. Its sadness is the sadness of anincomplete understanding. We see in a beautiful thing a thing that can receive nothing from us, while it gives much to us. Yet the very fact that beauty does make us ‘feel religious’ shows that somehow we do realise that we can give something to God, and find a little satisfaction in doing so; that even nature is not so impersonal as we were inclined to think. Our desire to create beautiful things is a sign that we understand our self also, our destined godhead, and that we too wish to reveal our self by creating for others, and giving to others. It is a sign that we understand that our relations with God and with our fellows are reciprocal.
Croce gives the clue when he shows that aesthetic is the first stage of the spirit’s activity. Bergson strikes a note that wakes an answering harmony when he urges that intuition brings us nearer to Reality than does intellect directed toward practical aims, even though some of his deductions displease; Kant and Hegel indicate the eternal value of aesthetic when they urge that it belongs to the highest and last stage. But Croce gives no reason for the longing that beauty forces upon us; nor indeed for the activity of spirit at all; he merely assumes spirit as a datum, and is defined by its activity.
But if we regard beauty as the expression of a perceived relationship, almost as one-sided love, the whole falls into place. Through beauty we get into touch with Reality, which Reality is,in its completeness, the mutual activity of Love. The basis of Love’s activity is Love’s freedom, even its freedom to limit itself. Mankind is winning freedom out of determined conditions; which conditions are the creation, the expression, of God’s love, through self-limitation. Because they are the expression of God’s knowledge of the Reality of Love, they are beautiful. The winning of freedom by man is achieved through adaptative relation to the environment. As this adaptation becomes conscious—as we gain intuitive knowledge of the environment—the sense of beauty is born, for we express our knowledge of this relation to ourselves; and make efforts towards further adaptation. These efforts are creative; and as we progress our creation becomes more and more altruistic; a creation for others with our relationship to them held consciously before us. These few words will suffice to show how perfectly our thesis fits in with the evolutionary views we have previously enunciated. The development of this side of the argument may be left for the present.
One other matter requires a brief consideration, and then we can leave the general outline of our theory and proceed to a more detailed treatment of certain parts of it. This is the old, unsolved problem whether beauty is subjective or objective; whether a thing is beautiful in itself, or whether it is only our thinking that makes it so. Croce has made it perfectly clear that thething or the scene which we erroneously call beautiful, meaning that it is beautiful in itself, physically beautiful, is simply the “stimulus to aesthetic reproduction, which presupposes previous production. Without preceding aesthetic intuitions of the imagination, nature cannot arouse any at all.” Perhaps Croce’s own thesis would gain in clearness and coherence if, starting from the sense of beauty aroused by a work of art as the re-creation of the artist’s intuition by the spectator, he had accepted the religious implication, and argued that appreciation of so-called natural beauty, was the re-creation by man of God’s intuition. But, with his prejudice against religion, he naturally could not boldly accept God as the Primal Artist, even though to do so would have made his theory far more complete, and would have saved him from relegating the chief factor of man’s life to the realm of psychological illusion.
To return to the immediate question, there can, of course, be no doubt that since beauty is an activity of the spirit, the expression of an intuition, beauty itself must be purely subjective. Equally, there can be no doubt that without the objective Reality the intuition could never be called into being. (We call it definitely objective for man, since all our argument in previous works has driven us to the conclusion that there is a necessary dualism for man as long as freedomis incomplete, love imperfect; as long, that is, as man is becoming.)
This grows more and more clear as one analyses the things that have roused in oneself the keenest sense of beauty. I think of a copse starred with snowdrops and aconite amid bare trunks under a steel-grey sky—a day in late autumn in water-meadows; emerald peacock-tails of weed in the river, and lights of madder and old gold—blue sea covered with pearly Portuguese men-o’-war and white surf breaking on black lava rocks—perhaps a dozen such landmarks, to me a priceless possession, to another about as interesting as an album of picture-postcards from somebody else’s travels. In mercy partly, partly in self-defence, one withholds these things from all but the few who care to understand. Let each fill in his own; for there are in every life such moments, when one is in touch with a larger life, and it is these moments which make a man, as Masefield has wonderfully shown in his poemBiography. Then there are the hours when human triumphs rouse in us the same ecstasy. Bach preludes and fugues, with their palaces reared by perfect stone added architecturally to perfect stone; the dainty certainties of Mozart; the sad gaiety and foreboding meditations of Chopin; the delicate cadences of Swinburne; the lusty, open-air searchings of Masefield, saddened by the obsession of sunset transience; the gentle longing ofthe refrain of theEarthly Paradise; the massive synthesis of theDynasts; the sorrow ofDeirdreandViolaine; the ethereal atmosphere ofA Midsummer Night’s Dream; pictures—architecture—it is all endless. Now the first thing we notice is that if we are in the wrong mood these things may have little or no appeal. I may walk in Water-meads and feel nothing of their charm. Bach may be mere noise, if I want to think of something else. Again the Madonna of the Magnificat may leave me unmoved, if my attention is on other matters. Those whose sense of beauty is really keen can never be unstirred by the beautiful, unless their attention is so rivetted on other things that they do not observe it at all, but most of us are of commoner clay; we can notice a thing yet hardly be aware of its beauty.
Here, in either case, our ordinary speech hits the nail exactly on the head: “I am not in a receptive mood,” we say. I do not receive what these things have to give. In an appreciative mood I take something from the thing that seems to me beautiful—this act is my intuition—and use it as the basis of my creative work—my expression. I need the presentation of an external object, or its memory, for that creation. Now, as we have just seen, a host of very different objects excite in an individual emotion of beauty in a pre-eminent degree, while if we reckon the objects which excite it in a less acute form, the tale is endless; yet the emotion all excite issufficiently the same in content, in spite of its multiplicity of form, to be expressed by the single term beauty. One is tempted to speak loosely of this effect of the beautiful on us as an emotion, though clearly it is not one, since it is expression. An emotion may be beautiful immediately it is known and expressed in this act of knowing, but the emotion is not beautiful any more than any other object is beautiful. Nevertheless, this loose usage of the term has one advantage. It draws our attention to the close relationship that binds together beauty and emotion. We have seen elsewhere that in the realm of emotion exists the freedom that lies between the incoming perception and the outgoing activity, forming the bond between the first and last, and determining the form of the response to the stimulus[20]. In the recognition of beauty there is freedom and emotion, as there is in every creative act. But the activity is dependent on stimulus, and every stimulus is primarily perceptual, though not necessarily in the strict sense of being perceived by an organ of sense. The perception may be wholly internal, the self being its own object in introspection[21]; the intuition may be the intuition of love itself. Here we see the origin of the common, yet I believe erroneous, statement that “beauty, as we understand it, is only for sense and for sensuousimagination[22].” If Beauty be the expression of an intuition of Reality, as Croce says, and Reality be ultimately the activity of Personal Being, which activity is relationship, as we have seen reason to claim[23], Beauty is not dependent on sense perception alone. Further, because the activity of personal relation is Love, we see in Beauty the creative knowledge of love, which is necessarily linked in closest intimacy with freedom and emotion. Love is not beautiful; it is simply the activity of relationship. The knowledge of love is Beauty’s very self. The world is not beautiful, but knowledge of the world as the expression of a part of Reality—of that portion of Reality which is limited and determined by the self-abnegation of God’s love—is Beauty. In so far as we merely perceive matter the aesthetic side is in abeyance. At this moment we know, not Reality, but Appearance. Our unaesthetic moods are determined by our more or less complete practical concern with Appearance, our more or less complete blindness to Reality. We have gone back to a lower, more primitive stage. In our limited and still largely determined existence we are bound to be occupied in a great measure with appearance. The practical must dominate the theoretic activity; the spirit must be unbalanced, asymmetrical. Even in our moments of greatest symmetry our apprehensionof the Real is largely at second hand.Pace, Croce, we would say—as we have said already[24]—that the Immanent cannot have immediate contact with the Real; man’s intuitions belong to his transcendence where they deal with the absolutely Real. Man immanent and limited is immediately in contact with God immanent and self-limited; only in so far as man is transcendent is he in contact with God Transcendent, and so in touch with the Whole. In his immanence man lives by symbols, which are sacraments; and here we find the symbolic aspect of Beauty. It is the material basis of this symbolic side of Beauty, rather than Beauty absolute, that has of necessity received most attention hitherto; and the puzzles of rival theories have arisen through failure to realise that a symbol is a partial expression of a reality, and that it can only be fully grasped when the reality which it symbolises is understood. A symbol has something of the reality itself, or it would not be a symbol, but it does not represent that reality adequately, or it would be co-extensive with it; wouldbethe reality itself. Beauty is thus subjective, in so far as it is necessarily the work of the spirit. But it is objective in so far as the reality of which it is the knowledge is personal and external to the self, and will always remain external, however complete the interpenetration of personalities, since personalities cannot be merged andlost in each other, but remain eternally in their self-identity[25].
A natural objectper seis not beautiful; only so far as it is understood as a partial representation of Reality, a symbol, is it beautiful.
Naturally, this statement arouses the objection that to most people the music of Grieg, if not of Bach, the pictures of Leighton, if not of Utamaro, are beautiful; and that there is a general consensus of opinion that the view over the Severn from the Windcliff, or the view of Lisbon from the harbour is more beautiful than Wormwood Scrubbs. The answer to the first part of this objection is obvious. In music, painting, verse, we are re-creating for ourselves the artist’s intuition. We know that he found beauty, and he has abstracted in his art in such a way as to render the beauty more easily recaptured. The artist is then our guide. He was an artist because his spirit was more sensitive to the reality than ours, and we follow him.
But in natural beauty, too, is not this true? Primitive peoples who live amid the most lovely scenery have little or no perception of it. But there are places and scenes where nature seems to have performed a sort of process of abstraction for us. The elements are simplified and harmonious, and there is little to distract the attention from certain main features. A comparatively large number of people will have a sufficiently developed spirit to get into touch with something beyond the mere object at such places. More education in abstraction and intuition is required to perceive some kinds of beauty; we see the same thing even in the artistic creation of men. Mendelssohn appeals to far more than Bach; Leader to far more than Botticelli. Moreover, the more obvious kinds of natural beauty, as we may loosely term them, will appeal to many lesser artists, who will give technical expression to them. We shall be thus familiarised with these representations, through pianolas and art-magazines and penny readings, or through concerts and picture galleries and study; and shall be the more prepared to intuit for ourselves when we meet with objective elements of a somewhat similar type. And we have further argued that even in natural beauty we are really following the intuition of Creative Mind.
One other point is perhaps worthy of remark. Natural science appears to compass a very large achievement in knowledge, and to express this knowledge with singular felicity; yet in science there is little that can be called beautiful, except in a highly metaphorical sense. The explanation of this anomaly is clear and incontrovertible. The work of theoretical science is essentially abstract, and is concerned wholly with Appearance, not Reality, except where it impinges upon thedomain of philosophy. The intuition of Beauty is an intuition of Reality.
We may now put down our conclusions in a brief and more regular form:
(1) External things are required to rouse in me a sense of beauty, but they are not in themselves beautiful.
(2) I create their beauty, by understanding them as parts of a Whole which is Reality.
(3) Beauty is expression; I must therefore form a clear intuition and express it to myself. This is my creative act; to which I may, or may not, give a technical embodiment.
(4) But I am not merely creating a photographic image, an imitation. I am getting into a certain receptive condition in which I can abstract from what I see its essence and fit this into my knowledge of Reality. I cannot see a thing as beautiful unless in some degree it gives me this impression of relatedness to Reality and to myself—linking me with the Reality of which I am a part. Beauty thus comes to be a felt relationship. My creation is the creation of a fuller understanding of relatedness.
(5) I am always dissatisfied with Beauty, which wakes in me a sense of longing exactly the same as the longing of an unreciprocated love. I receive and cannot give. Yet in this beauty and this love there is joy as well as sorrow.
(6) My life is part of an organic Whole whoseultimate meaning and purpose is personal relationship—interpenetration. The dissatisfaction is due to a sense of imperfect interpenetration. What is needed, and is felt to be needed, is equal give and take—reciprocal creative activity. Dissatisfaction comes when giving and taking are not balanced.
(7) Beauty is eternal, since the creative expression of Love is eternal, and Love knows eternally what it is—is eternally self-conscious. Love is relation, beauty the expression of the immediate knowledge of that relation.
(8) This knowledge is always a new, creative act. God must continually express His Being as Love else He would cease to be Love and so to be at all. In Creative Expression He renews Himself. He is for Himself ever new. And, because Love is centrifugal as well as centripetal, He must for ever express Himselfoutwards, so to speak, in the creation of other beings, and this His work of self-abnegation is new and beautiful.
(9) We have hardly touched on the problem of the ugly. We have little to add to Croce’s explanation of it as the failure of expression—as the failure to express coherent unity—which involves the failure of intuition. We shall just touch upon it hereafter; at the moment all we need do is to remind ourselves that the ugliest thing in the world is sin, because it is the failure to understand the whole, and to express the fullest, greatest beauty.
Theories of aesthetic, so far, have paid little attention to the development of the sense of beauty, except perhaps in the individual. This was natural enough so long as the idea of evolution was unformulated, or, if touched upon speculatively, played little part in men’s general attitude to life; and since the doctrine of evolution came to its own, little original work, beyond that of Croce, has been done in this region. Croce touches the evolutionary aspect but lightly, though it is implicit in his identification of History with Philosophy:
“Since all the characteristics assigned to Philosophy are verbal variants of its unique character, which is the pure concept, so all the characteristics of History can be reduced to the definition and identification of History with the individual judgment[26].” “If History is impossible without the logical, that is, the philosophical, element, philosophy is not possible without the intuitive, or historical element[27].” “Philosophy, then, is neither beyond, nor at the beginning, nor at the end of history, nor is it achieved in a moment or in any single moment of history. It is achievedat every momentand is always completely united to facts and conditioned by historical knowledge.—Thea priorisynthesis, which is the reality of the individual judgment and of the definition, is also the reality of philosophy and of history.It is the formula of thought which by constituting itself qualifies intuition and constitutes history. History does not precede philosophy, nor philosophy history; both are born at one birth[28].”
“Since all the characteristics assigned to Philosophy are verbal variants of its unique character, which is the pure concept, so all the characteristics of History can be reduced to the definition and identification of History with the individual judgment[26].” “If History is impossible without the logical, that is, the philosophical, element, philosophy is not possible without the intuitive, or historical element[27].” “Philosophy, then, is neither beyond, nor at the beginning, nor at the end of history, nor is it achieved in a moment or in any single moment of history. It is achievedat every momentand is always completely united to facts and conditioned by historical knowledge.—Thea priorisynthesis, which is the reality of the individual judgment and of the definition, is also the reality of philosophy and of history.It is the formula of thought which by constituting itself qualifies intuition and constitutes history. History does not precede philosophy, nor philosophy history; both are born at one birth[28].”
This view, however interesting and suggestive it may be in the realm of pure thought, for the simple reason that it does not boldly grapple with the fact ofpracticaldualism, is difficult of application to the process of the dawn of consciousness. Croce’s whole philosophy is directed to the denial of dualism; it is a new form of idealistic monism. We have been led in our earlier reasonings to deny an ultimate dualism[29], but we have also been led to affirm dualism as existent in Time, through the self-limitation and immanence of Eternal Spirit. On this basis, at which we arrived through a detailed consideration of the process of inorganic and organic evolution, we reared our whole superstructure. On this same basis, then, we will attempt to reason out a view of the evolution of beauty that shall be in harmony both with the facts of evolution and with the theocentric system that issued from our discussion as apparently the only possible explanation of the universe, so far, at least, as its broad outline was concerned.
If beauty be the expression of an intuition, and if, further, the intuition required involves a sense of relation, there can be no true perception of beauty until self-consciousness arises. Broadlyspeaking, this is to say there can be no sense of beauty except in man.
But here at once we are brought up against the fact of sexual selection. Surely the posturings of spiders, the dance of the ruff, the display of the peacock and the Bird of Paradise, the song of the warbler (if indeed this be a courting and hymeneal song) do imply some aesthetic preference in the mate? Still more does the elaborate performance of the Bower-bird, with its love-chase through the gay parterres of its carefully decked garden and in and out of the double-doored bower, suggest some sense of beauty.
This fact, which at first sight seems fatal to our whole theory, really supplies us with the clue we lacked.
Perhaps, even at this moment of courting, there is no true self-consciousness. Our previous discussions have led us to question whether this exists at all in animals, except possibly in a few of those most developed through contact with man. But there is unquestionably a sense of relation. The male and female are urged to love-play by the sexual impulse, and this necessarily involves a sense of inter-relatedness. It may not be—probably is not—sufficiently conscious of the self and the other to be termed love. It is a mere sense of the necessity of the other for fulfilling a need as urgent and as little understood as hunger.
But in the sex-impulse we find a beginning of the fact of inter-relation; and this is the foundation we require. The elaborate instances we have mentioned go a step farther than the simple sex-need. There is a definite attempt to make that need reciprocal by stimulating the dormant sense of relation in the mate through the use of objects to which ameaningis given through emphasis or through arrangement and juxtaposition. And this meaning is recognised, though perhaps not as beauty exactly; that would imply the expression of the meaning to the self, and it is doubtful if the self yet exists. But it is very hard to draw any line. At all events we can say that here there is relation—andself-consciousrelation is love; and that here is expression of a meaning and a need—and arecognisedmeaning, or intuition, when expressed to the self is beauty. We are on the confines of aesthetic. Now at first sight this idea may raise a feeling of antagonism, almost of disgust. We seem to have reduced beauty to terms of the sexual impulse. Further consideration will serve to dispel this sense of a derogation of beauty, and will even give to the sex-impulse itself a nobler significance, making it appear as the first stage in the emergence of Love and Beauty; rendering to it the honour due from an understanding of the end which it subserves. There can be little doubt that in man the perception of beauty in the opposite sex—notasbeauty perhaps, but assimple attraction to a beautiful person—does very generally precede that of more impersonal forms of beauty. Amid savage races this is unquestionably the case. The strange decoration of the body and other rites in the initiation of the adolescent, are undoubtedly expressions connected with sex-relations. To us they are ugly because they fail to express our fuller understanding; to the savage they are beautiful. And I believe that in the children of a highly developed artistic race it is true also in some measure. The love-admiration of boys and girls begins at a very tender age; and the psychoanalytic work of Freud and Jung gives a significance, no doubt often exaggerated, to acts and thoughts and dreams of children which, if not strictly sexual in the common sense, are yet connected with the impulse—called by Jung thelibido—that underlies the evolution of the race. If we employ the terminology of Bergson and Driesch, we may say that theélan vital, orentelechy, is thelibidoof Jung; that, as the animal progresses along the path of evolution, it becomes the sexual impulse in the wider sense given to the term by Freud; and that in one aspect it finally becomes the sexual impulse in the sense in which the term is commonly understood, while it achieves infinitely higher levels in the direction of spiritual progress at the same time. But observe what this implies. We have just noticed the obvious fact that the sex-impulse involves a sense of relation.It is probable that the first dawnings of relationship, albeit in a primitive, almost sensational form, arise here. The using of inanimate objects as tools is probably evolved later than conjugation, even in the protozoa.Difflugiamay make use of grains of sand to form its test, but all protozoa conjugate. Anyhow, this is a minor matter. The important point is that in the sex-impulse arises first the sense of a relation between individuals, which is destined, far later, to grow into the first stages of love; and in the development of the child we find traces of this origin, distorted and chronologically misplaced, exactly as one would expect from the Law of Recapitulation.
Another point of interest arises here. Many psychoanalysts, and notably Jung[30], have shown that mythology has an overwhelmingly sexual content. Further, Rivers[31], and others, have extended the conception of the primitive, or infantile, character of myth in relation to the primitive or infantile character of dreams, showing that both belong to a lower level of culture than does the waking self. As time goes on more and more, not only of the minor activities of the individual, but of the earlier activities of the race, are relegated to the unconscious. Psychologists have long recognised this fact in dealing with habit-formation, butthese recent writers have given it a deeper significance. The spirit uses the past as something on which to build the future. In old days, and among primitive peoples still to-day, the explanation of life was sought in a very childish manner. The impulse of sex was not understood, its relation to procreation was largely hidden, as witness the ceremonies of Intichiuma, and many others that, by symbolic magic, should confer fertility. It was mysterious, yet immensely powerful. It had some sort of relation to the birth of children and animals. The creation of all things was mysterious, but since the new was born these two mysteries must be connected. Hence the sexual symbolism of myths that were predominantly aetiological in character—that were predominantly attempts to answer the great Why? of the universe.
In the present connection, then, the chief interest of the work of Freud and Jung on infantile phenomena associated with sex, in so far as it is not exaggerated, lies in the fact that here too we have an instance of the working of von Baer’s Law of Recapitulation. In the animal the sense of relation begins with sex; in the child we have strange, fragmentary primitive sex-phenomena (if these psychoanalysts be right), dissociated from many of their natural concomitants; phenomena suggesting some close analogy with the temporary appearance in the embryo of structures that disappear again,having lost their significance. Can it be that the purely animal basis on which man’s great structure of relationship is raised, is merely a foundation, becoming gradually hidden, covered up?
Love is, no doubt, in origin an impulse of sex. Yet the highest love we know and experience in ourselves has nothing sexual in it. When a man and a maid fall in love there is no thought of such things in the mind of either. Primarily, true love is utterly pure from admixture with animal instincts, though it may be, and is, founded on them in the evolutionary sense, and though they still play a vastly important part, made beautiful by the love they subserve. But the love thatbeginsas conscious sex-instinct is no love at all. There is love between men and women, even young men and women, as well as between those of the same sex, that is either utterly free from all sexual content, or in which that content is so trivial in amount, and so completely dismissed from attention, that it is practically non-existent. If one is conscious of it at any moment, one is so by a definite effort of the mind, and for the specific purpose of bringing before oneself the wonderful emergence of the purest and highest activity of the spirit from so lowly and physical an origin. Such love is far higher than the love between husband and wife often is, where the sexual side is primary as well as primitive, and friendship secondary.Only when husband and wife are first friends, and then, after that, live together with a full realisation of the sacramental meaning of sex as the foundation on which the eternal temple of love has been and is being built, can their union approach the highest level. Then it is indeed the best of all in this life. It takes them closer to the heart of things than mere friendship would, and enables them to make their other friendships perfect through the understanding which it brings. The physical subserves the spiritual, and even in the physical the two are united. The physical and the spiritual are for them one—parts of a whole. Their own friendship is perfect as far as anything human can be perfect, and by it their friendships with others are made perfect.
We see, then, in the founding and development of the sexual impulse the first movement of theélan vitalalong its true path of evolution. Theélan vitaldetermines progress; it is the unrest, the divine discontent of spirit creating itself in matter[32]. It progresses along various roads, but the road that leads it to its own fulfilment lies through sex. Theélan vitalbecomeslibidoin an even narrower sense than that, almost co-extensive with Bergson’s term, which Jung gives to the word. For through sex thesense of individual, and subsequently personal, inter-relationship comes into being[33]. With the arousing of self-consciousness we find the dawn of love. This is the beginning of understanding. In the intuition of love is born the knowledge of Reality. Faint, partial, obscured by the sex-basis on which it is built up, it is yet the key to the mystery of being. Gradually, slowly, amid disappointing foulness and blind passion, it still grows. In its insistence on relationship it is manifested as the human aspect of religion. Side by side with it grows the knowledge and love of God. This is the divine aspect of religion, and the two together make the world and the activity of the spirit an intelligible whole. The “What is Truth” of jesting Pilate finds here its answer. All truth, all life, all process, in short Reality itself, is known in the knowledge of the creative love which is the activity of spirit. We see sexgrowing to greater and greater importance until we reach man. Then self-consciousness intervenes; the ideas of relation and of fellowship dawn; love finds a beginning, and then sex begins to lose its privileged place. From pre-eminence it sinks to a secondary position. Its spiritual part is nearly played, and something higher carries on the work. Love is more than passion. Sex must continue to function, for man has still a physical body; but its spiritual significance is understood, and that is a thing far greater than itself. As love grows, passion sinks and sinks from its first prominence, till love is all. “They neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels.” If this means anything at all, it means that in the end the physical body will have played its noble part and pass away, with its passions and its failures; while the life goes on, revealed in a body spiritual.
In the light of this understanding nothing is left unclean. Even in the work of Freud, in so far as it is true, and not coloured by the overstrained interpretations of a pathologist, there is nothing to shock, though much to sadden us. Where in man there is over-emphasis of sex there is a return to the lower, animal stage. Men are regarding life in terms of what has been, and not of what shall be. They are falling short of their own possibilities. In what degree this phenomenon is pathological, due to some neurosis or psychosis, we may not judge them; in whatdegree their over-concentration on animal passion, to the exclusion of true spiritual activity, is under the control of the will we are in presence of sin. For, from the evolutionary point of view, sin is the refusal to live up to the standard that is at present possible, the acquiescence in a standard that belongs properly to a stage outgrown; lower; more animal, less divine. It is content with an anachronism; the willing acceptance, the welcome of failure to progress—and this meansrefusalto progress[34].
But to see in the sex-impulse theexplanationof love is to fall into the same error as do the materialists, though the error has assumed a new and more subtle guise. You can no more explain love by sex than you can explain mind by matter. In both cases you are using terms to which you can attach no meaning. Ultimately I cannot think of matter and yet exclude mind; I cannot think of sex and yet exclude relation, and so, ultimately, love. For scientific purposes no doubt I can do both, for science is a process of abstraction in which we disregard everything that is not relevant to an immediate and narrow purpose. But philosophy may not abstract. She deals with the concrete and the real.
We have apparently lost sight of the question of beauty; but those who have followed the thought of the first chapter will realise that we have not in fact gone far afield. Upon the foundation of sex, as we have seen, the sexless activity of love is being slowly reared; and love is relation—relation is the reciprocal, creative activity which is spirit, and spirit is Reality. God is Love; men perfected are, or will be, love. The being of God and men alike is the activity of personal relationship, made perfect in union while yet each retains his self-identity[35]. The knowledge of this relation, the expression of it, is Beauty; and in Beauty the whole theoretic activity is comprehended in the ultimate resort, when intuition, the immediate contact, and logic, the mediate contact, are made one through perfect knowledge.
Since then, the first origin of the realisation of relationship is born in the sex-impulse, here the beginnings of beauty must be sought. But to search for them in any developed form—to search for what we understand by beauty—in the animal consciousness is vain. There can exist in it only some dim fore-shadowing, some preference. Not until true self-consciousness arises can there be any real sense of beauty, if beauty be the intuition of a relation expressed to the self and to others. And arguing from the psychological effect of beauty upon ourselves—the longing it produces, and the creative impulse—we have been driven to define beauty as the expression of a relation. The germ from which love and beauty will spring is alreadythere in the relation between animals, but who would guess that from the least of seeds should be born so great and noble a tree?
Many have sought the origin of the sense of beauty in the attraction of sex, and have then hanged Beauty under this bad name. To do this is to proclaim oneself a materialist. Our idea is far different. Reasoning from the standpoint to which we are driven by an examination of evolution that does not neglect the phenomenon of personality; finding the only explanation of evolution itself in free personal relationship; we see in sex the primitive ground-work of that relationship. Physically, the sex relation subserves many purposes; it provides a chief mode of introducing variation, it blindly helps on the evolutionary process through selective mating, it provides the chemical stimulus to the development of a new organism from the gamete or sex cell. But it does more. In the light of the end we see in sex a far nobler function; of a significance not transient but abiding. In the great adventure of Creative Love, to sex is given the task of bringing about those relations which constitute the ground-work of the personal union which is Love. Of the understanding and the expression of this relation is born the sense of beauty, destined gradually to transfigure the world for man, as he learns to see order and purpose and significant relation in the whole, and to endure eternal and yet always new.
Throughout this essay, in our quest for the meaning of Beauty we have been driven to reject the ground of the Natural as the proper standpoint for viewing the Beautiful. Rather, in Nature regarded from the point of view of ultimate Reality, we have found a value only through relation; and it is the intuition of this relation, expressed to conscious mind, that constitutes Beauty. No relation is, however, satisfying but one which is mutual. There is beauty in all expressed relations, even those of mathematics and physics, but because these relations are primarily expressed for the purpose of the science as between thing and thing, and their relation to the perceiving mind is relegated to the background, the sense of beauty is not roused in any great degree. By scenery a far more vivid sense of beauty is kindled, and hand in hand with this goes a keener sense of dissatisfaction and creative longing. By pictures and the like we are brought into touch with the mind of the artist; he has felt a relation and given to it technical expression, and we follow anew his creative intuition. In doing so we get in some degree into relation with his mind as well as with the thing in which he saw beauty; and we derive additional joy from this personalrelation, mediate though it be. But still there is dissatisfaction, as well as creative desire. This longing is identical with the longing of one-sided love. We receive and cannot give. Only in perfectly reciprocal love is the longing absent, while yet the creative aspect is most vividly present.
The study of Philosophy irradiates the world for us, increasing our sense of the beauty that is in it. We understand more; the world’s relation to us is more real, deeper, wider. Religion has the same effect, though in so far as it sometimes belittles the world it tends also to deaden our understanding of the world’s beauty. But if our philosophy coincides with our religion and our scientific theory is a part of both, Beauty has a chance of winning her proper position. If this philosophy and this religion find their ultimate Reality in the personal relationship we call love; if in their ‘science’ the creative process of that love’s activity in self-limitation stands revealed; Beauty indeed comes to her own. In our intuition of the world’s beauty we are in touch with the creative idea of the Master Mind. Only a philosophy and a religion that are rooted and grounded in the God who is Love, yet take the fullest account of the time-processes of love which we call evolution, can reveal the fulness of Beauty. Then Beauty is seen as Spirit’s grasp upon the relation between all the parts of the whole—a relation that is not yet complete, and can only be complete when the sole relation isthat of love between personal beings, of whom God is the first in timeless Being. Then, when matter is seen as the expression of God’s self-limitation for the sake of His people’s freedom, realisation dawns that matter is instinct with beauty for the understanding mind. Aesthetic becomes the link that binds all our theoretic knowledge together, making it one—serviceable as an equal partner with the practical activity. In this partnership the activity of the spirit is perfected[36]. The beauty of relationship is always new, just as love is always new. Our creation is our expression of our personal being in relationship, which is ultimately love. God’s creation is the expression of His Personal Being in relationship. Without relationship He would not be personal; but more is implied in this statement than merely internal relations. Personality, the δύναμις of κοινωνία, is centrifugally creative, as we have seen elsewhere, and the thing created, because it is a relationship, is beautiful, and is new. In the perennial newness of beauty we find the key to God’s creative activity. He creates new persons, because His relation to them is new and beautiful. Just because His experience is the experience of Perfect Personality new things are perpetuallyadded. Without this activity His Being would not be perfect. Its perfection is substantiated by its power of finding beauty new. Only the inactive dullard fails to see beauty and is bored, and in his very dulness he loses the prerogative of personality.
From the height of such a conception, standing upon ultimate Reality, we have looked down upon the humble beginnings of the intuition of relation, or of beauty. These we found pre-eminently in sex, and so far we were in accord with the psychoanalytic schools of Vienna and of Zurich. But we saw sex transformed and made beautiful, because our eyes were fixed, not on low, immediate purposes, but on the wonderful things that were to come. Mainly out of the relationship of sex spring music, art, literature—all the beauty that is so far removed from its physical origin—and it is in these things of eternal value that we find the true purpose of sex, as opposed to its immediate physical meaning. In music, art, literature we see the expression of growing understanding. The Reality is brought nearer and nearer to man.
Could Philosophy but bring our thought in closer contact with Aesthetic, as Croce has nobly endeavoured to bring it, understanding would quicken marvellously. Could religion embrace the arts and use them, the world would move Godward with fresh inspiration; the arts themselves would be enriched, coming into their trueheritage. Croce has paved the way to understanding, but he missed the goal because he did not perceive that the content of Reality is relationship. This essay attempts to indicate how much is lost by his omission. God is Love; Reality is Love. Love is relationship. Beauty is the expression of our understanding of that relationship. The Good, the True, the Beautiful are seen as different aspects of the same Reality; each definable only in terms of another; each involving, and indeed being, the same system of relations seen from a different angle. Goodness is the relation of spirit to spirit, Truth the relation of part to part and part to whole, Beauty the expression of the spirit’s knowledge of the relations that make up Reality. Our understanding of these relations—yes, and God’s understanding—is perpetually creative, and its creation is a new thing for Perfect Being; for the Perfection of Being is only substantiated by its power to create the new, the beautiful, the related. Matter is beautiful because it is understood as the expression of the infinite activity of the spirit of love. As Personal Being is the one thing that lasts beyond Time, and carries in itself the character of absoluteness, so it appears that Beauty, the knowledge and expression of the relationship of Personal Being, is also eternal. Beauty can never cease, for it is a necessary part of God’s experience and ours.
Although any detailed treatment of the concrete forms of art is entirely foreign to the intention of this essay, it is desirable that we should devote a little consideration to the way in which these technical expressions arise and to the psychological effects they produce. In doing this we shall refer to the work of various artists, but only for purposes of illustration. The part of the art critic is as unnecessary to our purpose as it is beyond our powers.
To omit all reference to concrete matters seemed undesirable, as leaving the theory rather in the air. On the other hand any detailed discussion of the theory as applied to the development of concrete art-forms must necessarily introduce debatable propositions, and must be tentative. It therefore seemed desirable to relegate the discussion of concrete matters to an Appendix, and to state clearly that what was there said was meant rather to suggest ideas than to lay down definite principles. Applications that may be open to question do not invalidate a theory, while they do make for clear understanding of it.
The question whether beauty itself is a universal or a particular has already found implicit answer. Since beauty is the expression of a relation that is understood as an essential determination of Reality, the concept of beauty is a pure concept. It is expressive, it is concrete, it is universal. It is clearly expressed to the self as a cognitive product, expressible in words (definition) and symbols (technique). It answers to Croce’s test that though “universal and transcendent in relation to the single representation, it is yet immanent in the single, and therefore in all representations,” and is therefore concrete. It also transcends thesingle representations, “so that no single representation, and no number of them can be equivalent to the concept” and so is universal.
But the foundation of every universal concept exists in an intuition of the particular. The intuition and its expression to the self come first, then follows the extension of the theoretic activity in logic. The concept of beauty must, then, have arisen, and at every fresh realisation must still arise, like all concepts, from an intuition of Reality as existent in a particular; and we must therefore seek its origin in specific individual cases.
Now we have argued that beauty is most probably associated initially with sex, since with sex the idea of personal relationship first arises. Our main thesis would not however be invalidated if it could be shown that a vague intuition of relation with inorganic or non-personal objects arose first. The intuition of relation may well have several separate starting points. Only, in this case, the reciprocal element would be absent (though its lack might not be felt except as a vague dissatisfaction) and could only arise when the sex-relation was the subject of a similar intuition. But most likely the intuition of relation did arise with sex, and, since our argument is concerned to show that ultimately the intuition of beauty leads to the expression of mutual relationship—love—and finds there the explanation both of its peculiar quality, and of the creative longing it produces, we will confine our argument mainly to this aspect.
Now if this be so, the sense of beauty is likely to be associated in its earliest stages with sight, and only in a secondary degree with sound, in the mating-call and in the beginnings of language. This is borne out by the fact that music usually lags behind, and is more primitive in expression than the visual arts—personal ornamentation and even decoration of objects. True, the first formalexpressionis likely to be in sound—in the beginnings of language. The dynamic relation between persons maybe accompanied andexpressed throughout by speech. But at this primitive level it will be a very limited intuition or understanding that is expressed, and moreover, an intuition that is based on visual stimuli. We may therefore leave the question of language for the present. Its importance in the earlier stages is mainly practical. Through sight (when the stage of simple chemiotaxis is passed) arises the perception of desirability in the opposite sex[37], which is the animal starting-point from which love is evolved. This desirability and this relation are expressed to the self, and this expression is beauty in its humblest beginning. Then, later, the creative aspect enters into consciousness. At first it was satisfied, unconsciously, in mating; but soon this unconscious satisfaction is felt to be inadequate. The representative process begins.
Now here we find a difficulty. According to our theory, the earliest attempts at the pictorial art should be pictures of men and women, but this is not, I believe, the case[38]. We must, however, remember that the idea of symbolic magic arises very early. This is natural. The representation of a thing is that thing in some degree. You have power over your representations, therefore you have power over the thing. The use of such power has an anti-social aspect, which forbids its common or public use except in the form, of a magico-religious ceremony. It is unlikely, therefore, that if such representations were made, they should have come down to us. Moreover, it is unnecessary that the magic object should bear any superficial resemblance to the thing it symbolises; indeed it is undesirable that it shouldbe recognisable by others, since the practice for which it is destined is nefarious and illicit. An esoteric significance is enough. There is a very close connection between primitive art and religion. Thus the Palaeolithic drawings of animals in the dark caves of Périgord and Altamira, are undoubtedly connected with magico-religious ceremonies to give power over the beasts. For this reason then—the acquiring of apriseover the object represented—we should hardly expect to find many early drawings of men and women, other than divinities. Even to-day many savages evince the greatest fear of having their likeness drawn. Nevertheless, these Neolithic drawings do exist, proving that there was no universal tabu on such representations. Moreover such drawings as those of the Bushmen show that primitive art at times uses drawings to record historical events, such as raids by other tribes. The comparative scarcity of primitive drawings is, however, easily explicable when we take the fact of magical beliefs into account. And there are sufficiently numerous examples of drawings of animals—bear, rhinoceros, lion, mammoth, bison, reindeer, to show that prehistoric man did have an intuition of his relation to other creatures. Furthermore, since the creative impulse does receive some, if unconscious, satisfaction in sex-relationship, expressed in word and action, there is the less need for technical expression in the early stages. We find at all events enough prehistoric drawings to show the recognition of relation, and the expressive activity, and these are the desiderata for an aesthetic fact.
Leaving the most primitive level, we find the development of decoration. Pottery is shaped with some regard to form and symmetry, and simple ornament of a geometric character makes its appearance[39]. Much might be said onthis subject, but we will confine ourselves to a few fundamental considerations.
In the first place we notice that here man’s art is practically unfettered by religious and magical inhibitions. Geometric forms do not generally represent any person or power[40]. Artistic creation therefore can move freely. Next, we observe that the art is reaching a higher level, and that consciously. There is conscious elimination and abstraction at work in the construction of patterns made of simple lines and curves. We find also the rudiments of an endeavour to find a harmony and rhythm that may give a sense of satisfied understanding. Men are beginning to feel the need of unity and harmony and order, and in so far as geometric ornament gives the feeling of these and of purpose, it is beautiful, for it expresses their intuition of an ordered reality.
It is unnecessary for us to discuss the intrinsic beauty of curves, or the mental satisfaction afforded by the golden section. The Greeks, and later writers such as Fechner, have expended much ingenuity in doing this. But their conclusions amounted to little more than that the aesthetic pleasure given by geometric form was due to the sense of symmetry and order and unity that were brought about by elaborate differentiation of detail subordinated to a single idea. As we have just said, Geometric ornament expresses man’s intuition of an ordered relation and interdependence in Reality.
We have introduced the ideas of elimination and abstraction. These are present in all artistic representation, and probably in all artistic perception. Because the power is rare in any high degree of development, artistic genius is rare. Moreover it frequently happens in ordinary peoplethat the perception of beauty is first aroused consciously by pictures rather than by natural scenes. A flower is simple enough for a child to understand, and we find that in many children, especially artistic ones, the perception of beauty is first awakened by flowers. The elements of a sunset, or a moonlight scene with clear tones and silhouetted outlines, are simple enough for the untrained mind to appreciate. But it requires an artistic genius to see the beauty of a complex landscape. In representing this technically he simplifies, emphasises, eliminates and abstracts. The man who looks at his picture follows the creative process of his mind, and, the elimination being already done for him, is able to appreciate. Moreover he receives training in the process, and is the more ready to eliminate for himself; to appreciate natural beauty of a complex order. Even if our artistic development is not high, we love pictures because in looking at them and understanding them we perform a creative act ourselves; but it is the artist who has made it possible for us to perform the act by his simplification of the problem. Browning clearly understood this, for he wrote: